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Writer, television host and transgender rights activist Janet Mock came to the spotlight in a 2011 Marie Claire article in which she detailed the struggles and triumphs she faced as a transgender girl growing up in Hawaii, traveling to Bangkok for gender reassignment surgery. She is a producer and interviewer for HBO’s The Trans List, author of New York Times best selling “Redefining Realness,” and author of the forthcoming memoir about life in her twenties. As she told Rookie Mag, “[Reading] prompted me to get a library card and just sit among those stacks and read books by women who looked like my self-image. That was important to me, because [those women] lived the life that I saw myself living one day, as a black woman.”

Below are Janet Mock’s favorite books, available to purchase as a set or individually.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

I first read this novel at 16 and felt centered in ways I’d never felt before as a reader. I’ve since returned to it whenever I feel lost and am given affirmation to journey for answers, like Hurston’s protagonist Janie in the muck.

9

The Color Purple

Alice Walker

Celie’s audacity to give her journey words through prayer instilled in me an audacity to say that yes, I am deserving of testimony and deserve to be heard.

8

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel fulfilled me deeply as a lover of period piece romances. Her characters showed me early on that love is as much a choice as it is a feeling, and the pull of family, society and tradition can be overbearing.

Don Quixote

The Magic Mountain

Guide

Grand lists is a curated arts site specializing in books and movies selected by 100 public figures and celebrities, ranging from designers, musicians, artists, actors, performers and directors, to politicians, novelists, scientists and athletes.